Re: ending jobs normally

Al,

Referring to the original topic:

Given the ease & simplicity of the simple act of signing off, coupled with the
potential havoc of varying off a session in the middle of a transaction, it
_is_ hard for me to imagine that you would have a difficult time enforcing a
policy of getting users to sign off.  The people who spend, what, minutes?,
hours? correcting problems caused by this, is their time free?  Do the owners
of the company enjoy throwing money away at a problem that could be so easily
solved?  Not any of those I have worked for.

You're probably right, my world must be very different from yours.  In my 15+
years in contracting & consulting in hundreds of midrange shops, I have seen
only a few instances where this was a problem.  I feel sorry for any AS/400
professional, already burdened with real work, who must also shoulder the
burden of constantly fixing problems caused by careless or untrained workers.

Dan Bale
IT - AS/400
Handleman Company
248-362-4400  Ext. 4952

---------------------- Original Message ----------------------
Duh

Your world must be very different from mine.

There is a spectrum of problems that can lead to garbage in our files, and
many of these problems are collectively of our own making.

In my world, there is no upper management mandate that there be any coherent
plan of training new users in their tasks or adherence to any
cross-departmental cooperation plans that might have been worked out with
former employees in that department.

When a new person is hired for some task involving using software I am
responsible for, I can reasonably assume they are taught NOTHING about our
operations or the software they will be using.

The person who used to do the work & understood a vast spectrum of nuances is
gone, but before they left, they had taught some co-worker how to handle the
basics when the primary person out sick or on vacation.  This co-worker who
normally unfamiliar with the application is now teaching the new person & of
course all they get are the basics.

Corporate Memory bleeds every time we have turn-over.

Thus there is a vast spectrum of things that can go wrong that I think would
be largely avoidable if the new user orientation included a few hours of how
to use the computer equipment productively & how to interpret an error
message & the notion that when your work is disrupted, you should not just
jump right back in once the connection is restored.

Some users asked for a software enhancement ... their request was
inexplicable ... come to find out they were not using their department's
manual & doing approx 100 times as much work that was neccessary.  The
personnel in question had been with us for several years.

We have several designated power users who are experts in the various
applications.  Normally they try to help when we have a compounded mess of
errors piled on errors such that the end user cannot just bumble on after the
latest mishap.

Of course part of this problem is the complexity of an ERP.

The company wants to hire people who do not need to know computer stuff, just
know whatever their job is.  But that does not work with the package we have
... the users need to know something about the application & its interfaces.

> From: D.BALE@handleman.com
>
>  I agree that some situations are out of the users hands.  But, don't your
>  users call you or someone in I.S. when this happens?  Besides, Dawn made it
>  pretty clear that her users are leaving their workstations without signing
> off.
>
>  - Dan Bale

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical
sub-assemblies
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